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Well this isn't a blog but I may use it like one for a while. Feel free to comment question, discuss, or suggest anything about the pages or their content.
Welcome.
Posted on 01 May 2004 at 02:33 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Added a cycling page and moved some stuff there. Tweaks to CSS now I need to update the source page *sigh* maybe I can autogenerate that?
Posted on 01 May 2004 at 11:14 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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A quiet weekend. Mocked up a page layout for the real swancon 30 web page, made a pitiful start on the Anzac day weekend bike ride, and spent a fair bit of time fiddling and adding links to the main pages. As I add a link to the web pages it gets to come out of the overflowing bookmarks list.
Posted on 02 May 2004 at 06:56 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Spotted two Pink and Grey Galahs sussing out a hollow in a Plane tree near work. Given that they tend to pair for life and re-use the same hole every year this is probably the pair that have been using the hole for the past two winters. They fledged two young'uns the first year and one the second.
Back hurts, kitchen / laundry drains blocked. Took pain killers, Plumber coming tomorrow. Back still hurting. Stupid back. Stupid drains. What next?
Posted on 03 May 2004 at 05:50 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Dead Steveg day today. Plumber fixed drains with super plunger ... at least it isn't tree roots.
Back somewhat fixed. Must look out for Neurofen Stong on the supermarket shelves.
Detoured on the way to osteopath to drop trike rear wheel into bikeshop for rebuilding. Probably doesn't need it but I may as well get new Stainless spokes like the front wheels.
Watched last episode of Haibane Renmei last night. Nice series , pleasant but no great depth. Kind of feel good.
Posted on 04 May 2004 at 05:34 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Steve, I don't know whether you're aware of the fact there is a Living in Australia blogging community; you may want to take a look at http://www.livinginaustralia.net/index.shtml
Posted on 05 May 2004 at 05:04 AM by Lukasz
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Still sore Steveg. Got Nurofen Plus from chemist. Codeine plus anti-inflamatory (Asprin) is much more effective than Codeine plus Paracetamol.
Poss is probably coming over for tea tonight. Out of deference to our collective diets (or fear of our collective dieticians) we are having low-fat, low almost everything hotdogs.
Checked out the rear tire from the trike wheel that is off being rebuilt and found that it is worn down to the fabric in places. Time to fit the new Hookworm!
Found more mistakes in Monday's entry. Must remember not to post under the influence of strong medication. Which reminds me I need to take some now and lie down for a while.
Posted on 05 May 2004 at 05:10 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Hi Lukasz, Thanks for the pointer. I'm not really sure that is my scene. Too many ugly Australians whinging about how terrible we are as a nation.
Posted on 05 May 2004 at 06:56 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Oh dear, I've just discovered googlism from Lukasz's quicklinks. Rotfl!.
Posted on 05 May 2004 at 07:28 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Thurs PM 06/05:
The back is improving ... I lasted until 1PM before needing painkillers.
Westnet is down for the second evening in a row. It is easy enough to use my dormant iinet account but I can't mail out with out re-configuring my mail service.
Watching Witch Hunter Robin an episode at a time in the evenings. Good stuff.
Posted on 06 May 2004 at 08:28 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sat AM 08/05:
Had rain Friday morning Yay!. Supposed to be a wet weekend.
Lots of thunder type rumbling Friday afternoon but that was merely the roadies testing the sound system for the Kiss concert at the WACA ground which is across the road from where I work. Seven semi's of gear into a huge temporary stage an 3+ days of setup time. No wonder they charge $AUS140 a ticket. No I'm not a Kiss fan.
Stupid Westnet reconfigured my account to a static IP address and neglected to tell me it was done. And the change order did not show up on my account history when I rang to enquire why their dial-up lines had become write-only. Then I went through the painfull process of working out all the other things I needed to change to support a static IP address. I suspect Bind still isn't handing off address lookups correctly but I can fix that.
Played Vinci last night. Evil Steveg won after Leece decided that trashing Richard and coming second was preferrable to trashing me, allowing Richard to win, and still only coming third. Weapons plus Fortifications rocks as an civilisation basis. Richard's Specialist Shipbuilders were mucho dangerous along the coast as well.
Posted on 07 May 2004 at 07:52 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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A blog covering the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Found on the comp risks digest. The articles refers to the impact of digital cameras on the avalability of records of this kind of abuse.
Posted on 08 May 2004 at 03:51 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sun AM 09/05:
More rain threatened for today! [I you are wondering why I am excited about rain the look at the state of our dams.]
Saw the last two episodes of Witch Hunter Robin last night. I've seen the first third at home and the last third at JAFWA. And I'm watching the middle third as MADMAN releases them. Interesting premise, good writing, interesting characters (except for the lead male who could easily be replaced by a mannequin). 8/10.
Still having trouble with the Westnet account. Today the latest missive from Westnet says they have made my account Dynamic and assigned an IP address. Bzzzt ... mutually exclusive operations. When I have had some more coffee and breakfast I will try and login and see what they have done. Mind you ... to be fair, they do try harder and are more responsive than my previous ISP (who I am using now 'cause I have a little credit left).
Lazy day yesterday. Probably lazy day today. Sunday arvo is usually reserved for cooking a big pot of something to last until Wednesday. I think this week may be Porkolt out of Elisabeth Luard's European Peasant Cookery, Top cookbook. I wouldn't mind seeing the TV series again either.
Posted on 08 May 2004 at 08:39 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Forgot to say ... MADMAN are releasing a whole bunch of Studio Ghibli films to Australian Cinemas.
Posted on 08 May 2004 at 09:03 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon AM 10/05:
More rain and wind this morning. Going to work in it is kind of less interesting. Still the Sunday evening weather report said we had 30mm of rain for the weekend. That is a big improvement over the 18mm cumulative since the beginning of the year.
Westnet appears to be working for me. They appear to be using DHCP to force a specific IP address. I guess by using DHCP with PPP they already know who I am from the login before PPP is started. D'oh my stupid I guess.
Had a snap Swancon meeting yesterday .. I had dropped off the internal mailing list and didn't see any notices. Oh joy. Plotting progresses.
The only way to get reasonable priced meat for a stew / curry / casserole is to buy something like a roasting leg of lamb and cut it up yourself. I can't even get a reasonable price for hogget or mutton any more. They are just as expensive as prime lamb. And don't even mention the price of beef.
Posted on 09 May 2004 at 06:10 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon PM 10/05:
Watched the first two episodes of Yukikaze last night and tonight. A little Independence Day, a little Top Gun and a layer about the relationship between Lt. Fukai and the Yukikaze the AI in his fighter. The aliens, codenamed JAM, invaded Earth through a gate in Antartica. The humans beat them back and have carried the air war into the alien planet codenamed Fairy. Both sides are deploying more advanced weapons. But at this point Earth still has no idea what the JAM are. Yukikaze seems convinced that the JAM are able to masquerade as earth forces and Lt. Fukai is willing to fire when Yukikaze says enemy. For Yukikaze they use a very HAL motif with a close up of a camera lens with a reflection of the cockpit although Yukikaze is not articulate and communicates through the aircraft systems.
Posted on 10 May 2004 at 09:29 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Tues PM 11/05:
A pair of galahs checking out the hole in the plane tree again. No way of telling if they were the same pair as before but obviously no-one has moved in yet. The hole is a bit marginal as the entrace opens almost straight up and the male sometimes has to perch in the entrance with wings half spread to keep the worst of the rain out.
When I car or bus to work I often walk along the river bank past the back of Trinity Colledge and Glouscester Park Raceway to the East Perth Cove and back. Today there were 20 or so corellas sitting quietly in the trees looking bedraggled. Not usual behaviour for corellas and fairly late in the season to see them still around town.
About half way to East Perth Cove I have been observing a bees nest hanging from the branch of a native fig. The nest is under the canopy but not otherwise protected. Today there were just the ragged stumps of the combs and a few surviving bees drifting aimlessly about. The wreckage of the nest must have been cleaned away by the council workers (it was right above the path). The sight was like a bombed out city and made me feel down all afternoon.
Pah! I need a drinkies ... I'd better wait until Maureen gets home.
Posted on 11 May 2004 at 06:07 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Wed PM 12/05:
Not much to report from me. No sign of my rear wheel. Buses through the bit of the central city that I need to cross are running unpredictably late due to congestion caused by preparation work for the new underground train station.
Maureen had a stimulating experience when the handlebar stem of her Dahon folder folded without notice during her commute. Luckily this happened while she was on the bike path rather than on the road.
A lot of the local bloggers are taking advantage of the new Blogspot templates. Some of them are quite tasty.
Greenspeed have produced a trike ute. Looks cool to me.
We've run out of new anime so we put Patlabor TV on for our nightly half hour. Gee, animation quality has improved in the recent stuff we have been watching.
Posted on 12 May 2004 at 09:09 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Thurs PM 13/05:
It kept on feeling like Friday today.
I found out yesterday that one of my co-workers runs a dragster in his spare time. We had an interesting discussion about the engineering problems involved in running a nitromethane powered dragster. Start from a whacking great supercharger via a custom built engine (no stock parts) through a computer controlled multi stage clutch and a fixed axle to the rear wheels. The engine needs to be rebuilt after 10 minutes of run time.
Posted on 13 May 2004 at 08:03 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Woot! Real times on the timestamps!
I dont know what the temp is but it is too cold. I must be down to ... oh like ten degrees ... centigrade that is.
Posted on 13 May 2004 at 07:00 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sat AM 15/05:
Just upgraded to QuickTopic Pro. Ads begone!
The rebuilt rear wheel is still not ready. 8-(
We put in a couple of anime cells from Gasaraki to be framed last week. First order of the day will be to collect them as soon os the shop opens.
I ran a short RP game using the Usagi Yojimbo rules last night taking a party of three through a short mountain pass adventure. The UY RPG uses the Fuzion ruleset which is not one that I am really familiar with. The combat works well but there isn't any mechanism for pitting man against the elements. I can see some GURPS bleeding over here. 8-)
Posted on 14 May 2004 at 08:59 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sun AM 16/05:
New colour scheme! I need to look in my photo files and see if I have a piccy of a Galah. Not happy with link highlighting yet either.
Got the framed Gasaraki cells back. We aren't happy with one ( not the framers fault ) and we sent half an hour discussing ways to mock up what we want. Finally we got smart, took a digital photo, and loaded it into the GIMP for fixing. D'oh.
I now have access to the Swancon web site. I neet to assemble the page set and get the maintainer to switch the link. We are still discussing colour schemes but I'm setting it up using CSS and XHTML so I can change the whole look of the site with a dozen keystrokes. Heh! You might also notice that strict XHTML loads and presents a useable page very quickly. In part this is because most browsers switch to a smaller faster parser that gives the finalised text portions of the page to the renderer very quickly.
Posted on 15 May 2004 at 08:25 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sun PM 16/05:
Picked up a pair of Techpants from Paddy Pallin's on Friday. They are supposed to be worn under trousers but they are so loose fitting that that seems a little unlikely. They seem about equivalent to long lycra bike knicks but with no chamois pad and two thirds of the price. As I ride a recumbent the lack of a chamois pad does not concern me. My bum isn't being trashed by my bike seat.
Also picked up Cycling Outback Australia an "Ecotouring travel guide Cairns-Darwin-Perth" by Craig Bagnall and Nikki Brown. This is an interesting and comprehensive book based on the authors travels in 1999-2000 and published in 2003. The only problem is the authors make some really interesting route choices and don't provide much information on the alternatives. They also make some interesting pronouncements in the "eco info" and "historic/cultural info" sections.
Posted on 16 May 2004 at 09:19 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon PM 17/05:
Two galahs indulging in some mutual preening near the plane tree hole. Looks like they are planning to move in.
The Swancon 29 pages are gone so we are trying to get the Swancon 30 pages on line asap. Decisions, decisions.
Posted on 17 May 2004 at 06:54 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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I wonder, Steve, when you port to a CMS system like Movable Type (or better not, after second thinking), WordPress or Blosxom (this one does not require any PHP and MySQL support provided by your ISP). Won't you?
Posted on 18 May 2004 at 03:06 AM by Lukasz
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Hi Lukasz: Well, yes and no. This is kind of an experimental thing and I'm not sure what its future is. I did think of using Blogger or Livejournal but eventually decided to trial this before making that investment of effort. I am probably more likely to leave this as a commenting mechanism and use a couple of forms and some XML manipulating Perl scripts that I happen to have lying about to add variable content to the web pages. But in any case I'm not likely to make a decision for a while. My style is better suited to the live journal approach I'm unlikely to produce the kind of literate micro essays that you do. *envious look* 8-).
Posted on 18 May 2004 at 09:53 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Wed AM 19/05:
Madman release day today. I'm waiting for the final disk of RahXephon. This series covers a lot of the same territory as Neon Genesis Evangelion but does it a lot better IMO. I commented on NGE recently on a friends blog. There is a tendency among anime writers to fail to provide closure to their series so I live in hope that RX won't be like that.
No work this afternoon ... off to the local itSMF mini conference.
The real pages for Swancon 30 are up. There are still some details to be cleaned up but they function even if I did manage to leave off the CSS file an put up one wrong image.
Time to be off ... must catch 7:30 bus.
Posted on 18 May 2004 at 07:07 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Wed PM 19/05:
Yesterday evening I didn't post anything because I spent a couple of hours getting the video driver working. The Nvidia drivers have to be loaded from the Nvidia site and cannot be distributed as part of he SuSE distribution. Every time a new OS patch gets loaded from SuSE it forgets the nvidia drivers. Okay so far except I can't work out why it stops and I can't work out why it starts working again after a few reboots. All in all it is intensely annoying.
Some really interesting topics at the itSMF mini conference plus nibblies and a few drinkies afterwards. I think I get value from my membership. 8-)
Still no sign of the rear wheel. It is going to be a shock to the system to start riding again after this break.
Posted on 19 May 2004 at 10:37 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Thurs PM 20/05:
The Galahs are moving into the hole in the Plane tree. This morning they were both there again and one was collecting leaves and taking them into the hole. Definite nest preparation behaviour!
The bus coming home was a double size articulated unit. Most unusual on this route. I was very impressed with the skill that the driver displayed navigating it through the chicanes and traffic calming.
My shirt pocket is replete with pens tonight. It contains:
- One Pentel Liquid Gell 0.7mm Roller Ball.
- Two Tombow Objective fountain pens, one red, one green with matching ink.
- One Pentel V disposable fountain pen (very nice) with black ink.
- One Waterman Hemisphere fountain pen in "red marble" (purchased yesterday) with black ink.
- One Waterman Laureat fountain pen (gift today) in "green mineral", empty.
- One Parker ??? fountain pen (not mine) in matt black, empty.
Someone at work had advertised the red Waterman as an unwanted prize, with attached price tag for $175. She also posted some pictures and I was able to identify it as a "Hemisphere" and value it from the web at about $US50. I passed this along and offered $AUS50 (about 70%). Yesterday the seller contacted me and said all the other bids were around $50 and did I still want it? Did I what! As the deal was being done one of my co-workers, Jan Owens, said she has a Waterman fountain pen and would I like it gratis? So today we had a fountain pen show and tell. And I brought Jan's favourite Parker pen home for cleaning in my ultrasonic cleaner. 8-)
Posted on 20 May 2004 at 06:44 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sat AM 22/05:
Judith and Joseph are stopping by for a couple of nights. I think they are heading home shortly but I've lost track.
Maureen laid claim to the Laureat fountain pen once it had been cleaned up *sigh*. I did manage to get Jan to accept an old Parker fountain pen of mine for parts and a nice Japanese brush marker that I don't have a use for. Jan of course immediately starts drawing nicely formed Kanji *sob*.
New shoes day yesterday. I'm a wiiide foot size and I need a last that doesn't push my big toe inwards otherwise I get a lot of foot pain. This constrains my choice of shoe a bit but We do have one wide fitting specialist store in Perth and they have two suitable shoe styles. The last coupe of years I have been wearing Kumfs, this year I thought I would try the Rockport model.
Posted on 21 May 2004 at 08:15 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Sun AM 23/05:
Spent most of yesterday afternoon at the state aquarium with Maureen, Judith, and Joseph. It must have been open for ... 15 years or so but I have not previously managed to get there. Normally fish don't do much for me but this was interesting enough. The centerpiece is a large pool with a 100m transparent walkway in the bottom. There are also a large number of small aquariums with small fish, a seal pool, a "petting" pool, and some intermediate sized open displays illustrating locations like Rowley Shoals. The seal pool has an Australian Fur Seal and two New Zealand Fur Seals. They are:
- Annie; 18 year old, 96 Kg, female AFS and the dominant seal.
- Julius; 18 year old, 135 Kg, male NZFS.
- Sally; 5 year old, 35 Kg, female NZFS.
Sally is a sub-adult and will probably be sexually mature at 6. The usual lifespan is around 20 years in the wild or 25 in captivity. I'm not sure that I have Sally's current weight right but she will max out at around 65 Kg. A full grown male Australian Fur Seal would be around 300 Kg and way to big for a hands-on keeper. It is unusual to have a dominant female in the group but Annie doesn't see anyone she regards as a male.
Posted on 22 May 2004 at 08:51 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon AM 24/05:
Yesterday morning the visiting horde decided to visit the Rail Transport Museum in Bassendean. When we arived we found we were a couple of hours early so we jumped back in the car and sloped off to the Guildford shops. We spent an hour or so trolling the antique shops and having second breakfast lunch. In amongst the antique stores we found a little store with Japanese paper, fabric, incense, and teasets. As everything was quite reasonably priced I grabbed a small teapot, a couple of teacups, some peach green tea, and a couple of sheets of decorative paper. Maureen and Judith, both being dolls house constructors were right into the paper and fabric. Joseph wandered off next door into the book exchange where he was eventually joined by the rest of us. Then off to the other end of Guildford to look at historic buildings. This year Guildford is having its 175th anniversary celebrations which makes it around the fourth or fifth oldest European settled town in Western Australia. Except for the Post Office, which is at the run-down phase of its maintenance cycle, everything is a lot cleaner and neater than I remember from my youth. Guildford is near to the limit of navigation for the Swan river in summer and used to be the major trans-shipment point for goods on barges coming upriver from Fremantle and going out on camel and bullock teams to inland areas.
Then off to the railway museum. There is a substantial number of historic steam locomotives and passenger carriages with a couple of Diesel locos and other associated machinery. This time I managed to secure a guidebook so that I now have some information on the various loco's that don't have placards. Having been throught the carriages only last year, this was how I spent my time. I only failed to locate the V 1220 which had been withdrawn from display. The V class was the last of the freight steam locomotives and the second most powerful steam locomotive used in WA. You can find this type in Railroad Tycoon as the Mikado class.
Eventually we returned home, and packed J & J off on their way. They are off to Albany for a few days and then back to London.
Sunday night on SBS was a Lost Worlds show Leonardo's Dream Machines part one. Two teams, each trying to construct one of Leonardo da Vinci's mechanisms with 15th century materials in less than three months. The two mechanisms were a giant crossbow and a flying machine. I think the flying team have the easier time of it even if they still think that lift is generated by the Bernoulli effect. At least they know which direction they need to tweak the design to make it work. Next week we find out the results.
Posted on 23 May 2004 at 07:24 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon PM 24/05:
The female galah came out of the hole in the plane tree and flew off with her mate as I walked past this morning. So eggs are not laid yet.
I found out why the wheel build is taking so long today. The wheelsmith was waiting for spokes to be supplied. Except, the rear wheel uses standard length spokes that he should have available. The front wheels, on the other hand, have deep flanges to allow for the drum brakes and need an odd length spoke which I source from Greenspeed.
Paper comics for the week are Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom, #4 of 4, by Ted Naifeh. Boneyard, #14, by Richard Moore. The Five Star Stories, #19 & # 20, by Mamoru Nagano.
Posted on 24 May 2004 at 07:04 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Wed AM 26/05:
I changed the text colour of this page from straight black to #333333 on Monday evening. It doesn't seem to make much difference on the TFT screen at home but the CRT at work shows a softer effect. Superflous Banter is having a little investigation of the effect.
During the last two weeks four of the top CSS design gurus have had posted content that has broken their web site for IE 5.5. Two I e-mailed and they fixed their sites. One I don't care about. And one is broken in a minor way. Now given that a couple of these people are high profile "CSS is the only way" evangelists I feel like I am mowing tall poppies. On the other hand if they can't get it right is CSS ready for the big time?
Posted on 25 May 2004 at 07:11 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Thurs AM 27/05:
The Galahs were fluffing around their hole again as I went by yesterday morning.
There have been a lot of Corellas hanging around in the sheoak trees at the back of Trinity College the last few weeks. They have been forming up into pairs and playing around the WACA grounds and police HQ in the early mornings. Probably they are searching for nesting sites of which there is a short supply in the suburban areas. Like most of the Australian parrots they nest in tree hollows (usually where a limb has broken off). But they are a sustantially bigger bird than the Galahs and need a corresondingly bigger hole. Not easy to find in an environment where trees never get that old. All of the bigger parrots are under pressure from nesting site loss. One common problem in the wild is feral honey bees taking over suitable hollows.
Saw my Dietician yesterday morning. She wants me to lose 4 kilos over winter *sigh*. This time of year I want to eat warm food and hibernate. I'm already feeling the cold and the inside temperature is still only around 15 degrees Centigrade.
Posted on 26 May 2004 at 06:36 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Fri AM 28/05:
The birds are on the move. The Corellas were flapping around yesterday morning in higher numbers than usual. When I took a walk along the river at lunchtime there was not a Corella to be seen anywhere. The Pacific Black Ducks were absent from their usual loafing spot under one of the native fig trees and there are hordes of Eurasian Coots out plucking at the new grass.
Stumbled accross the NASA daily astnomical photo page yesterday.
If you have ever wondered about the paragraphs of fake latin text used in layout demos then have a read of this page.
I have a number of page updates slated for this weekend. Reworked sidebar links, a shortcut icon, a new visited maker based on an technique from CollyLogic. I'll even bring the source in the page source page up to date.
Posted on 27 May 2004 at 07:02 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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I remember talking to our head bird keeper here about the number of black ducks on the lakes - he said that, come the first rains, they'd be off.
It rained that day and that evening there were V formations of ducks overhead aimed at where ever it was they were going.
The ibis will be off soon.
Posted on 27 May 2004 at 08:01 PM by Pamela
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Hi folks, just taking a break from designing tiles. Steveg, you mentioned the galahs were fluffing around their hole below.
I remember reading a description of galahs hanging on to the area
around their nesting hole and beating their wings. The author, wossissname, Arthur Upfield, who wrote the Napolean Bonaparte books, reckoned that their continual doing of this polished the area around the nest and made it completely inaccessable to snakeys. I wonder if it is so. Having done ABSOLUTELY no research, does anyone know offhand about it?
Posted on 28 May 2004 at 02:30 AM by Alicia Smith
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Sat AM 29/05:
Only one Galah in view yesterday morning and that was only a tail sticking out of the hole. There were reduced numbers of Corellas around although there were a score or so back in the sheoaks at lunchtime being "vewy vewy quiet". However there were Rainbow Lorikeets everywhere making up the noise level.
Leece: During the incubation period, once the sun is high enough to shine directly on the entrance, the female Galah will come out of the hole, hang from the rim by her beak and flap her wings for a minute or two. I always thought this was more the equivalent of a few morning exercises to keep the flight muscle in trim. I can't see much buffing effect on the tree.
Poss: Yep, off for the breeding season. For the non-locals: the inland areas have a lot of ephemeral water features which the ducks exploit once there has been enough rain to re-activate them. Ibis are much bigger and need more rain before it is worth their while leaving the easy environs of the Zoo gardens.
Paper comic booty for the week: The Celestial Zone II, #11 by Wee Tian Beng.
Posted on 28 May 2004 at 08:13 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Re Sacred Ibis - lot of people hate them, I love 'em! They have huge hooked beaks but are surprisingly gentle when taking food from you. Not a sensible thing to do but in the past I haven't been able to resist.
Very intelligent animals - they've learned how to open the bins by hooking their claws over the bin lid, leaning back and flapping their wings until the lid comes off.
Posted on 28 May 2004 at 09:17 PM by Pamela Smith
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Sun AM 30/05:
The simple rework of the web pages is escalating. Well ... the same colours are there and the main text is not so oppressive but I am not yet happy with the sidebar. *sigh*
Poss: Wow, I hadn't heard of the bin opening behaviour. That long bill does make them excellent pickpurses. I've seen them in action at the zoo cafe.
Saw episode 1 of Samurai Champloo last night at JAFWA. Interesting retro drawing technique. Reminds me a bit of Gad Guard and Soul Taker. The story engaged my interest and, not suprisngly, had echos of Cowboy Bebop. The fast forward / fast back and intercutting of the story lines means you do have to watch carefully to maintain your continuity. This might become wearing after 13 episodes. I think we'll keep watching this one.
My copy of the Chrononauts card game arrived Friday at Tactics. This is an excellent game. You are a time traveller contesting the shape of (mostly) USA history from 1865 though 1999. There is a tableau of critical events (linchpins) and their downstream ripple effects. Players may alter the critical events which causes the ripple effects to become paradoxes. Paradoxes may then be patched to create new versions of history. The objective of the game is to either:
- Restore history to the version you remember.
- Gather the particular set of artifacts needed to complete your secret mission.
- Become totally famous through patching lots of paradoxes.
Addictive fun!
Posted on 29 May 2004 at 08:19 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mon AM 31/05:
Web page rework complete and up although it took most of the day. Even found time to fix a couple of Swancon pages although they didn't go up until this morning. I wonder if it will all work on IE 5.x?
Sacred Ibis: A couple of years ago the name police got at this and proclaimed that as the Sacred Ibis of Egypt was a different species our species would henceforth be known as the Australian Ibis. Ptoui! Maureen and I have taken to referring to it as the Secular (or defrocked) Ibis.
Lazy day yesterday. The huge pot of soup was made Saturday so no cooking required. Maureen spent some time refurbishing her mountain bike. Her body position is leaning too far forward for comfort so she consulted me which led to a great deal of descriptive waving of hands and pointing at pictures in the two Richards' Ultimate Bicycle Book. The outcome is probably going to be a new top stem to raise her posture.
Watched the first Seven Wonders of the Industrial World on ABC last night. The subject was the construction of the Great Eastern steamship by I. K. Brunel. Ultimately it never ran at a profit because it was too large. Jules Verne travelled on it in 1867 and wrote about it in his novel The Floating City. At one point in its career it suffered a gash in the hull larger than the one that sunk the Titanic. But due to the comparmentalised double hull the passengers never noticed.
Part 2 of Leonardo's Dream Machine was much as I expected. The glider flew, and the giant crossbow broke thus illutrating that today we know a lot more about making bricks fly than we know about giant wooden weapons. The glider was no more sophisticated than gliders of the 19th Century an no closer to real flight. It flew because the builders knew which direction to tweak things in to make it fly and the pilot already knew how to control it. There was a larger amount of Leonardo lore in this episode. Over all a good show but it could have spent more time with the construction teams.
Posted on 30 May 2004 at 07:31 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Re Ibis: people at the Zoo call them "That thieving bastard what stole my sandwiches!"
Posted on 30 May 2004 at 10:13 PM by Pamela Smith
afog 44
Tues AM 01/06:
Yep ... found some IE bugs with the new style sheets. Mostly due to IE using a different base font size to everyone else. Everything should resize nicely now. Mind you then there is the Q tag. Supposedly it denotes an inline quote and Galeon uses it to insert double quotes (stupid americans) but IE 5.x does nothing with it. Luckily due to another bug in IE you can make IE only CSS styles. Just don't get me started on Galeon and horizontal rules.
Started watching the last disk of RahXephon last night. This show is everything Neon Genesis Evangeleon should have been.
No Corellas anywhere yesterday. Most of the Silver Gulls were out on the river clustered into rafts with the occasional Pelican doing Great Eastern impressions. Also saw a pair of Pelicans chasing a trio of Galahs. It even looked like one of the Pelicans had a go at a Galah with its beak. Most unusual. A new crop of Pacific Black Ducks has moved in under the fig trees but they are skittish and not used to the pedestrian traffic yet. There were also a couple of Terns patrolling the river. Funny thing ... when a Silver Gull gets a beakful of food every other gull in the vicinity is on its case trying to get it to drop the morsel but a Tern which is about the same size as a Silver Gull can have a fish flopping around in its beak and nobody even stirs. Just goes to show the power of having a big beak I guess.
Re Ibis: And now you know why they were defrocked. 8-)
Posted on 31 May 2004 at 06:52 PM by Stephen Gunnell